Author Resources

These are the essential resources I’ve used to sell 70,000+ fiction books over the last six years without an agent or publisher. Current as of November 10, 2024.

NOTE: I only list services I’ve actually used.

COVER DESIGN

Listed price is for a complete cover (eBook and print-on-demand). Prices can fluctuate due to the designers updating their prices, exchange rates, or design complexity.

Designers are listed from most expensive to least; this is not a quality ranking. These designers can also create assets like Facebook banners, logos and so forth. Note that some designers have long lead times, so contact them a minimum of 3 months in advance of your publication date.

ILLUSTRATED COVER DESIGN

  • Tom Edwards (varies based on complexity of illustration; my cover was ~$950) (sci-fi)

INTERIOR FORMATTING

  • I recommend Vellum ($29 per book/$249 for unlimited use). Beautiful, simple, and intuitive eBook & print formatting with a single click. Mac only, but I ran it on Windows with MacInCloud ($30 for 30 hours). That was usable, but the latency made that a little choppy…so I bought a Mac specifically to run Vellum. It’s that good.
  • Scrivener ($60) and Adobe InDesign ($23/mo) can also format eBooks and print interiors, but are far less user-friendly.
  • Reedsy and Draft2Digital both offer free formatting tools.

EMAIL SERVICES

  • Kit (formerly called ConvertKit; free up to 10,000 subscribers if you recommend other creators in your newsletter; $25/mo for 1k+ subs): I use this for all my lists; well-designed interface and a solid feature set that balances ease of use with advanced features.
  • Active Campaign ($15/mo for 1k+ subs): has more advanced automation features than ConvertKit, but a less user-friendly interface.

MARKETING TOOLS

  • Story Origin ($10/mo): similar to BookFunnel and Prolific Works for cross promotions, but with more features (including tools to help you manage things like beta readers and audiobook codes) and a super-responsive developer who is constantly releasing updates.
  • Book Funnel ($5/mo): seamlessly delivers your free books (e.g., reader magnets) to email subscribers. Vital for building your mailing list. Also offers opportunities to join cross promotions with other authors.

TRACKING TOOLS

  • Book Report (free for authors making $1,000 or less per month; $19/mo after): a much improved tracking dashboard for displaying and analyzing your sales data from Amazon and other retailers that requires no special technical skills.

CRAFT & MARKETING BOOKS

Recommendation lists usually devolve into overwhelming and useless 35 page appendixes. I’ll be frank: I read a lot of books. Most are not good. These are indispensable.